lost
in a dark copse, where the creek’s course forked
I came
a cross
a man

here, he
hear he,

was
inclined
to speak:

stranger
where i come from
we wear memory on our sleeves
stitched by hand through warp and weft
a pattern language following food
and forebears
embroiled and embroidered

((he stopped and slowly stretched his arms outwards
his hands turning downwards
as if pouring the remnants of two chalices
onto the forest floor))

seasons tinted
the dead, dyed and woven
donned and dresse
our royalty, our reality
here, stranger, we mummify memory
and clothe ourselves in her blessings

((from crown to sole, he was harboured by regalia
the coloured courtship of birds, the curled locks of flocks,
the thermal husk of his people, the evidence of village))

on our saint days
we dance to goat and sheepsong
the shimmering coins shake and shuffle, sonorous
echoing the bronze bell barn orchestra of singing land
following orbital ancestors
and telluric tracks
we comb the plains
and iron the amulets

following four legged noses
attuned to blood and bone
compassed on the path of predecessors
parading the procession of time hitched to place

a death march
in.
other.
words.

masticate, migrate
compost, commune
they are family
they
our food

tutors of tale, travel, and tradition
apprenticed by hoof and hearth
a covenant, contained (from the Latin continere, “to hold, together”)

the Grand Mystery of Dreams
like the Great Mercy of Life
is that such things
their re-membering
is not guaranteed

and so it must be learned
and so it must be taught
kneel, stranger, and sip the syrup of life at the river of your days
that your inner visions might properly serve outerworlds, otherworlds

water
is the wombmilk sacrament of time longing to be remembered
the dendritic veins of a dreaming body

water
is the memory of the dead, manifest
the wellspring of olders, of elders

water
feeds the soils that fertilize the seeds
that root and remember

a chorus of angels
the katabasis of culture

Thirst
Thirst is our way of being claimed
by all of this

by all of them

by all of
us

an earthly insurance
that the living practice
laying alms in the riverbed of the dead
the architecture of the underworld
the tide of amniotic uprisings
all fed by Hunger and Thirst

to forget this is to allow the umbilicus to run dry to capture rain and intubate dreams
to fabricate fire and fleece food

Hunger and Thirst are slender Gods
the only of their kind to get fat off of neglect who, if feared and unfed
go looking for ways to starve

Hunger and Thirst are
not the absence of Flesh and Flow, stranger but their twins
the elder brothers
the guides and guardians

orphan the invocations for one and all are famished not a failure to cook, but to be cooked

and the memory of how this has come to pass
sit, stranger, and pray over your last sip,  that it might serve the sap of memory.

drink
the afterbirth
the umbilical cord

the deerskin we draped over our days the antlers that carved our remembrance
the leaves, the bark, the bone, the blood

to live sewn to the nape of the world

to remember these things
one must be a village
one must be many

to forget these things
one must be themself
and nothing more

with-out village
all you have is identity

with-out the world
you are divided among your poverty and become a people out of bounds
one for whom a question becomes a cancer:  who are we?

fill in the b l a n k s  with

ancestral geography burned into the skin
imposed tongues
monomyths
biology
racecraft
nation
states
of mind

all aliases of exile
all examples of
falling
out of love
out of place

when where we are is undermined by where we are from… when the dreams of the dead are forgotten… when the tears for their lives are forsaken… Flow and Flesh will wither
Thirst and Hunger will return
and all will be remembered
one way or another

on the eclipse of the fourth mourning

I

rose

awake

and couldn’t tell
if I was a prayer, a flower, a teardrop
or a great dream being spun by an old man.